Papers by Valeska Korff
Disasters, Jan 9, 2015
High employee turnover rates constitute a major challenge to effective aid provision. This study ... more High employee turnover rates constitute a major challenge to effective aid provision. This study examines how features of humanitarian work and aid workers' individual characteristics affect retention within one humanitarian organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Holland. The study extends existing research by providing new theoretical explanations of employment opportunities and constraints and by engaging in the first large-scale quantitative analysis of aid worker retention. Using a database of field staff (N=1,955), a logistic regression is performed of the likelihood of reenlistment after a first mission. The findings demonstrate that only 40 per cent of employees reenlist for a second mission with MSF Holland, and that workplace location and security situation, age, and gender have no significant effect. Individuals are less likely to reenlist if they returned early from the first mission for a personal reason, are in a relationship, are medical doctors, or if they c...
Disasters, Jan 2015
High employee turnover rates constitute a major challenge to effective aid provision. This study ... more High employee turnover rates constitute a major challenge to effective aid provision. This study examines how features of humanitarian work and aid workers' individual characteristics affect retention within one humanitarian organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) Holland. The study extends existing research by providing new theoretical explanations of employment opportunities and constraints and by engaging in the first large-scale quantitative analysis of aid worker retention. Using a database of field staff (N=1,955), a logistic regression is performed of the likelihood of reenlistment after a first mission. The findings demonstrate that only 40 per cent of employees reenlist for a second mission with MSF Holland, and that workplace location and security situation, age, and gender have no significant effect. Individuals are less likely to reenlist if they returned early from the first mission for a personal reason, are in a relationship, are medical doctors, or if they come from highly developed countries. The paper reflects on the findings in the light of policy.
Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology, Dec 2014
A novel approach to evaluating the impact of nonprofit organizations is proposed, combining socia... more A novel approach to evaluating the impact of nonprofit organizations is proposed, combining social network and linguistic analysis. The authors examined data from nonprofit organizations’ websites and site hyperlinks to other organizations. They identified 369 sites of organizations that measure social impact and captured inbound and outbound weblinks to construct a relational structure. Keywords from the sites were categorized as reflecting scientific, civil society or managerial domains and located the entity in a triangular semantic space. While most organizations fell into one of the three communities, some were in an interstitial space spanning these domains. The interstitial organizations used a mix of terminology, were densely interconnected and connected extensively to organizations across domains, but there were few direct connections among the three domains. The resulting map integrates cultural and relational dimensions and reveals hidden patterns and clusters. The approach can be used with other social systems combining rich text with relational data.
Brunsma, D., K. Smith, and B. Gran (Eds.) 2013. The Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights. Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2013
Humanitarian aid refers to the effort to relief the suffering of people affect by armed conflict ... more Humanitarian aid refers to the effort to relief the suffering of people affect by armed conflict and natural or man-made disasters. Since the mid-1990s, this altruistic motivation has been supplemented by a focus on the effectiveness of aid provision. Central to this development is the effort to professionalize humanitarian organizations’ management and workforce. Focusing on the management of one humanitarian organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)/ Artsen Zonder Grenzen, this dissertation examines diverse aspects of organizational life and how these reflect, or are shaped by, professionalization efforts. Focal areas of analysis are MSF’s human resource management approach, the socialization of new recruits, staff turnover and retention, as well as the impression management and legitimation strategies MSF applies to maintain a status as a highly respected organization despite recurrently drawing criticism for unconventional acts. Research involves the quantitative and qualitative analysis of various data sources, including MSF’s personnel database, interviews with staff members, employees’ performance evaluations, and organizational policy documents covering 18 years of MSF’s history. This detailed case study offers a comprehensive examination of an internationally distinguished humanitarian organization and its efforts to consolidate professionalization processes with the moral cause of humanitarianism.
F. Kolland, P. Dannecker, A. Gaechter, and C. Suter (Eds.) 2010. Soziologie der globalen Gesellschaft – Eine Einführung. Wien: Mandelbaum., 2010
European Journal of East Asian Studies, 2006
This paper compares the ethnic (indigenous) movements in northern Thailand with the violent confl... more This paper compares the ethnic (indigenous) movements in northern Thailand with the violent conflict in the southernmost provinces of the country, and considers how these movements relate to both the state and the local population. The construction of the nation as an 'imagined community' is a project of the national political elites. Similarly, the construction of an ethnic identity emerges from the local elites. This implies that national integration and minority formation are simultaneous processes, in which national elites enforcing a national identity confront local elites constructing minority identities. The potential conflict is reduced through co-opting the local elites into the ruling system. This has not been the case for the ethnic minorities of the north. There they either define themselves as representatives of the minorities, or monopolise administrative positions established through decentralisation policies. In the south the conflict in which the local elites lost their power positions dates back decades, if not centuries. There too co-optation did not take place until the 1980s. Then a relative pacification set in, when possibilities for political participation for these elites improved. The conflict escalated again when these possibilities were reduced after the election in 2001 with a new government policy.
Visualization by Valeska Korff
Places and Spaces: Mapping Science - Exhibit, 2014
This map shows the presence of civic ideals, managerial concepts, and scientific assessments amon... more This map shows the presence of civic ideals, managerial concepts, and scientific assessments among 369 organizations actively involved in efforts at measuring social impact. For each organization, information on their scientific and managerial discourses with civic ideals was retrieved from websites using a web crawler. A total of 105 keywords were identified as relevant for an organization’s position vis-à-vis the three lines of discourse: civil society, science, and management. The large triangle in the middle features all organizations color coded by their dominant discourse. Key institutions are labelled. Interstitial organizations whose blending of discourses suggests they have become fluent in all three discourses are colored in yellow. Weblinks between the four linguistic communities document connections between organizations. The triangles on the left show both: integration within and connections between discursive communities. Linkages of the pure discourse organizations and the interstitial organizations are shown in the lower left.
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Papers by Valeska Korff
Visualization by Valeska Korff